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Transyouth Crusader, Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, is Being Sued.

Possible landmark case against high profile practitioner of transgender medicine for minors

By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | December 14, 2024

The Economist recently published a succinct description of Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy’s eminent position in American transgender medicine for minors.

JOHANNA OLSON-KENNEDY is among the most celebrated youth gender-medicine clinicians in the world. She has been the Medical Director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA), one of the first high-profile American youth gender clinics and presently the largest, since 2012. A frequent expert witness in court cases who is often quoted in the media, Dr Olson-Kennedy also leads a $10m initiative funded by the National Institutes of Health to study youth gender medicine—by far the largest such project in America. In addition, she is the president-elect of the United States Professional Association for Transgender Health.

Many readers of this description may struggle to grasp that Johanna Olson-Kennedy is a medical doctor who commits manifestly perverse atrocities against the most vulnerable, emotionally unstable members of the human race—that is, pubescent girls.

Had much of the U.S. medical profession not come unmoored from common sense, common decency, and the most elementary understanding of adolescence, Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy would already be in prison. I rejoiced at the news that she is being sued in what may prove to be a landmark case. As was just reported in ZeroHedge :

A 20-year-old woman has filed suit against California hospitals and doctors, saying they rushed to conclude she suffered from gender dysphoria and then “fast-tracked [her] onto the conveyor belt of irreversibly damaging” medical interventions that included puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and a double-mastectomy at age 14.

According to the complaint filed in Los Angeles, Kaya Clementine Breen says she was sexually abused as a young child and that, around age 11 or 12, “began struggling with the thought of developing into a woman and began to believe that life would be easier if she were a boy.” When she shared those feelings with a school counselor, the counselor told Breen that she must be transgender, and then called her parents to push the same assumption as a fact.

Breen’s parents sought out “experts” at the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles, including Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, one of the world’s most vocal advocates for the gender-transitioning of children. “At her very first visit, after mere minutes, Dr. Olson-Kennedy diagnosed Clementine with gender dysphoria and recommended surgical implantation of puberty blockers,” according to the complaint, which also alleges that Olson-Kennedy neglected to perform a mental-health assessment or inquire about past trauma or abuse.

Echoing a grievance that commonly surfaces in the gender-transition realm, the complaint alleges Olson-Kennedy told Breen’s parents that their daughter would “commit suicide if she did not begin taking testosterone…At that time, Clementine had never had any thoughts of suicide, and she certainly had never expressed anything along those lines to Dr Olson-Kennedy.” According to The Economist, Olson-Kennedy’s own notes made no mention of suicidal ideation. Ironically, it was only after enduring transition procedures and “therapies” that Breen would later attempt suicide as her mental health declined and she contended with extreme depression and anger.

Stunning that such grotesque child abuse is allowed to happen in any nation that considers itself even remotely civilized.

December 14, 2024 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Israel deliberately targeted captives in Gaza to ‘get rid of them’: Hamas

Press TV – December 14, 2024

The Israeli military has recently pounded a location in the Gaza Strip “deliberately and repeatedly” to eliminate regime soldiers held captive by resistance groups, according to a statement by Hamas’s armed wing.

Al-Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Obeida said on Saturday that the regime’s forces “targeted a location where some enemy captives were held, bombing it multiple times to ensure that they were killed.”

He said they bombed the place “with the intent to kill the captives and their guards.”

According to the statement, the resistance fighters “made attempts to rescue the Israeli prisoners, successfully extracting one of them, but his fate remains unknown.”

In a separate post on Telegram, Qassam Brigades released a footage showing a wounded Israeli captive, who was struggling to move amid the rubble most probably caused by the regime’s airstrike.

In a message along the footage, it said that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli military’s chief of staff Herzi Halevi “are seeking to get rid of their captives in Gaza by all means.”

Hamas held captive around 250 people during its unprecedented operation against the occupied territories on October 7, 2023. The resistance released 105 of the captives during a week-long truce last November.

Six captives were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the southern Gaza Strip in September.

Hamas said at the time that Netanyahu “is directly responsible for the killing of dozens of captives due to bringing the ceasefire efforts to a failure.”

It has repeatedly said that there is no alternative other than “a ceasefire, the withdrawal of the occupation forces, and the implementation of a prisoner exchange agreement” in exchange for the release of the Israeli captives.

Netanyahu has long been obstructing mediation for a truce and a deal to release the captives still held by Palestinian groups in Gaza.

December 14, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel Gives Biden His Marching Orders

Syrian land will be annexed into “Greater” Israel

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • December 13, 2024

My former CIA colleague Larry Johnson has a real ability to clarify the significance of the constantly growing deep dark hole that Joe “Mumbles” Biden, he of failing mental capacity, has hurled the American people into. Larry wrote on December 12th that “There is still plenty of time before Donald Trump is inaugurated for Joe Biden’s team of cretins to start World War III. I think the biggest risk is that Israel may be emboldened to attack Iran and try to destroy sites, and may be encouraged to do so by the Biden lackeys. In short, American interference, at the behest of Netanyahu’s Israel, has left the Middle East in ruins, with over a million dead and open wars raging in Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, and with Iran on the brink of a nuclear arsenal, being pushed against its own inclinations to this eventuality. The collapse of the Assad regime has prompted a punishing military response from Israel, which has launched airstrikes at military targets across Syria and deployed ground troops both into and beyond a demilitarized buffer zone for the first time in 50 years.”

Given the destruction and partitioning of Syria, it has become impossible to consider United States foreign policy without some acceptance that it is driven and, in a sense, directed by Israel and Israel’s formidable domestic lobby in the US. “The Lobby,” as it is commonly referred to, controls both Congress and the White House on key issues and manages the media narrative in such a fashion as to make Israel the permanent victim, never the aggressor. Even though Israel is now marching in triumph across what remains of Syria and has indicated that it will be sticking around as an occupier, the move is being described as “temporary” and “defensive” by White House spokesmen. The Lobby’s success rests on the corruption that lots of money can buy, obvious to nearly everyone in politics, but a forbidden topic, sometimes referred to as an antisemitic “trope,” i.e. “Jews and money.” Israel’s role in managing the Joe Bidens and Donald Trumps is largely exercised in the broader Middle East but it also includes passionately supporting Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukraine, a process derived in part from Jewish mythologizing and obtaining revenge for the alleged “pogroms” carried out in imperial Russia. Subsequent Jewish dominance of the Soviet intelligence and security services, which saw the killing of millions of Christians in Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe, are carefully excluded from the narrative.

In the latest bit of “mowing the grass” by the Israeli military, the country’s new Defense Minister Israel Katz told the press that the Israel Air Force (IAF) had carried out more than 480 strikes across Syria during the two days after the initial invasion, deliberately destroying most of Syria’s strategic weapon stockpiles. Meanwhile, the Israeli navy totally destroyed the Syrian fleet based at Latakia overnight. Katz hailed the operation as “a great success.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the day before, had called the rapid defeat of Bashar al-Assad’s regime as “a new and dramatic chapter… The collapse of the Syrian regime is a direct result of the severe blows with which we have struck Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran… we are changing the face of the Middle East.”

When informed of the initial invasion of al-Assad’s Syria by Israeli, Turkish, insurgent and US forces, Donald Trump said that the conflict was none of our business and it would be best to keep out of it. Hopefully that will be the policy after January 20th’s inauguration, but one recalls that Trump’s record of pandering to Israel is almost as bad as Biden’s, and he was the one who decided (admittedly under pressure from the Pentagon) to continue in 2017 the military occupation of a third of Syria that included its oil resources and its best agricultural land. Add in the crippling US and European sanctions on Damascus and one might argue that since that time Syrians have been poor and starving, causing refugee flows and hostility towards the al-Assad government that contributed to the success of the recent uprising.

To be sure, many Syrians are celebrating the fall of an admittedly repressive, authoritarian, and corrupt Bashar al-Assad government. But other Syrians, particularly from hitherto protected minority groups like Christians, Alawites and Shiites, are now living in fear of or fleeing from the violent sectarian insurgents that have taken the place of President al-Assad. Christian Churches have already been looted and desecrated and warned not to hold Christmas services, not to sponsor Christmas parades, and not to display the image of St. Nicholas.

To be sure, fearing what is to come is legitimate as the “rebel” leader of the al-Qaeda derived Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Terror group, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, who now goes by his given name Ahmed al-Shara, is a founder of al-Qaeda in Syria, al-Nusra, and a former deputy to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The US State Department has listed him as a terrorist as well as HTS as a terrorist group, and has placed a $10 million bounty on al-Jolani’s head, which presumably will soon be removed by Joe Biden. There is plenty of blood on al-Jolani’s hands and little in the way of evidence that he will not opt to slaughter those who he sees as his enemies, much of the killing being guided by the extreme religious groups that make up his followers. Indeed, there are already reports of group killings, including numerous soldiers in the Syrian Arab Army who surrendered rather that fight the insurgents.

Al-Jolani now claims that his extremism was just a “phase” and he has several times confirmed that he wants good relations with Israel, clearly a condition imposed by the US to allow him to remain in power. He has even suggested that Israeli air support enabled his warriors to move quickly from their bases in the north to Damascus. But al-Jolani has never actually apologized for or disowned the atrocities committed on his watch in 2011-3 when he was actively killing fellow Syrians. This includes August 2013 massacres in some of the Alawite areas of Latakia, which included “the systematic killing of entire families,” an international investigation later determined. One observer also reported that the insurgents were devoted to “sectarian mass murder” This is the legacy of the new “inclusive” government in Syria. According to one other ominous report, it appears that Sharia law has already been announced by the newly installed justice minister, Shadi Alwaisi.

So, what is in it for the United States? Nothing but a curt thank you from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who clearly connived with Joe Biden’s Special Envoy Amos Hochstein, an Israeli by birth, to set the ball rolling towards Syria through adroit use of an attack on southern Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah followed by a phony ceasefire in Lebanon that gave Netanyahu a free hand and empowered Israel to invade and overthrow its neighbor Syria, parts of which will undoubtedly be annexed to help create Eretz or “Greater” Israel. It was and is all part of a plan by the US and Israel to reshape the Middle East to benefit the Jewish state and you can bet that Iran is the next target. And a delusional Joe Biden took credit for it all in his usual haphazard way, claiming after the regime change that Assad’s “main allies” — Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia — “are far weaker today than they were when I took office.” Their inability to save Assad was “a direct result of the blows that Ukraine, Israel have delivered upon their own self-defense, with unflagging support of the United States.”

Sure Joe, what bullshit. At the end of the day, to bring down Syria the US spent billions of dollars arming an insurgency that they knew was dominated by al-Qaeda in a government replacement scheme that benefited only Israel and Turkey and which targeted a country that in no way threatened the United States. It sure makes sense to me and I hope you will be comforted by it when you are hauled off to prison after you leave office and are prosecuted for exceeding your constitutional authority by involving the United States in two unnecessary wars. Some might call it treason!

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

December 14, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Trump is a nightmare for the EU in more ways than one

With its submissiveness to the US and contempt for its president-elect, the bloc’s set itself up for a perfect storm of punishment

By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | December 14, 2024

For a man his age, incoming US president Donald Trump has a knack for cultivating a bad-boy image. Refreshingly direct to the point of rude honesty, or dishonesty, as the case may be, he has no time for polite circumlocution. His threats are harsh, his demands unvarnished, including toward Washington’s so-called allies in Europe, which really are, at best, clients, and, more realistically, just vassals. In that spirit of candid, no-frills domination, Trump already has a long record of threatening NATO, which he sees – plausibly – as a scam in which European members fleece the US to free-ride on its insane (but that’s a different story…) military spending.

Or, in the genteel English still cultivated at The Economist, “through NATO, America is the guarantor of the continent’s security.” Yeah, right, by firing missiles at Russia… The problem with Trump is that he is uncouth enough to know the real relationship is much more like Don Corleone “protecting” your funeral parlor. And he behaves accordingly: Even during his first term in the White House between 2017 and 2021, he started scaring other NATO members into higher military spending, while never allowing them to feel safe about his commitment. Art of the tough deal: Keep ‘em guessing, keep ‘em on their toes. And it worked, too: the European spongers began to pay more. So, there will be more of that, rest assured. If, that is, there will be a NATO to speak of.

Even less noticed is the fact that the new old US president – and thus capo dei capi of the West – is not much kindlier disposed toward the EU. And yet there it is: Trump’s frank, open, and long-standing dislike for that strange bureaucratic behemoth that is about as democratic as the former Soviet Union, less efficient than the Habsburg Empire, and so full of its global “norm-setting” mission that even American “indispensability” looks oddly old-fashioned by comparison.

As early as the beginning of 2017, when the great American bruiser gate-crashed the White House for the first time, The Economist warned its European readers to “be afraid” of Trump, a man harboring “indifference” and “contempt” for the EU. Really? How unheard of! The raunchy-tycoon-turned-peremptory-president, the British establishment Pravda of neoliberalism and Russophobia explained, would seek to shatter the EU by playing “bilateralism.” That, of course, is Euro-babble for respecting individual countries’ governments by taking their sovereignty more seriously than power-grabbing delusions of grandeur in Brussels. And – oh, horror! – he might even try to talk Russia. (Spoiler: back then he did not – big mistake.)

That, however, was 2017. Now, things have moved on. Even before Trump won his second presidential election by crushing his Democratic opponents, The Economist admitted that “’Trump-proving’ Europe” is a notion doomed to fail, which means EU leaders may well become “geopolitical roadkill.” How so, you may wonder?

Well, first of all there is Russia. Regarding Moscow, Trump seems ready to talk, and in a substantial manner we have not seen since the end of the Cold War: He has publicly signaled that he does not believe in trying to coerce Moscow by further escalation; his freshly appointed advisers Mike Waltz and Keith Kellogg, though known for ambiguous signals in the past, will fall into line, as they should as public servants. And if not, they’ll be fired, Trump-style, fast and without remorse.

To say the least, Trump no longer feels as restrained by Washington’s deep-state, deep-freeze Cold War re-enactors as during his first term. Sure, it’s the US: there is always the possibility someone might try to murder him, again. But if he stays among the living, which is likely, then it’s payback time: Talking to Russia now is one delicious way in which he will dish out well-deserved retribution for both the media-lawfare circus of Russia Rage (aka ‘Russiagate’) in which his opponents weaponized slander and disinformation against him. And, more importantly, Russia has been winning the war in Ukraine, not only against Kiev but also, in effect, against the West. In sum, Trump has less reason to be afraid of his own backstabbers at home, and Washington has more reason to be much more careful about Russia.

Moscow, meanwhile, has made it clear repeatedly that any new agreements would have to be mutually beneficial. The time of Gorbachevian naivete will never return. Yet, at the same time, Russia does seem open to – serious – talks: The Russian leadership does not merely carefully watch Trump, as you would expect. It also sends back calibrated pings that signal cautious appreciation of his overtures, as recently over his criticism of firing Western missiles at Russia.

Hence, nightmare number one for the EU: Trump is serious about ending US support for the failed project of inflicting a geopolitical demotion on Russia via a proxy war in Ukraine. That will leave not only the regime of Ukraine’s past-use-by-date leader Vladimir Zelensky high and dry but remaining fanatics in the EU as well. In the best-case scenario, the US will leave the European vassals with the cost of the postwar, whatever shape that may take. Trump has already said as much. In the worst-case scenario, EU elites could try going it alone. That is, worst-case for them, in every (un)imaginable way: economically, politically, and yes, militarily, too.

And behind Trump’s willingness to make good on his election promise to end the American cluster-fiasco in and over Ukraine, lurks the possibility of a much larger turn toward – wait for it! – diplomacy in the US-Russia relationship. Perhaps it is early days to mention that other long-forgotten D-word – and it would also take two to tango, of course – but a phase of détente cannot be excluded. If it were to take place, America’s European vassals would come to regret burning their bridges with Moscow to please Washington.

Then, nightmare number two, there is the economy. The US-EU relationship is the single largest trade connection in the world, worth about $11 trillion per year. That, you may think, constitutes a lot of common interest and thus reasons for treating each other if not gently then, at least, cautiously. Nope, that’s not how this works, because the relationship is lopsided, and Trump is furious about it. For him, the EU’s trade surplus with the US is yet another way in which shifty Europeans have been milking America. His weapon of choice to retaliate and rectify the situation are, of course, tariffs, the higher the better. Even before his re-election, Goldman Sachs warned that his rule could cost the EU as a whole a full percent of GDP. And yes, that’s a lot, especially for a continent already largely economically depressed, demographically declining, and with badly squeezed public finances.

What can EU leaders, those sadly submissive vassals about to be abused even worse than usual by their hegemon, do now? Frankly, not much. It’s already too late: They have made themselves dependent as never before on whoever happens to win the strange event Americans call “elections” and gets to mess with the world from the White House. And that is not at all Trump’s fault, by the way. (No, and not “the Russians!” either…).

Take, for instance, the EU’s wannabe despot Ursula von der Leyen. Building her own power grab – like Stalin, as it happens – on a mix of executive apparat overreach, crony networking, and ideological bigotry, she has made one serious mistake that may cost her dearly: She has cozied up so shamelessly to the outgoing Biden administration that, serious rumor has it, Trump cannot stand her. So, alternatives are in demand: Maybe he likes Italy’s Giorgia Meloni better? Or originally the Netherlands, now NATO’s Mark Rutte, who is constantly praised for his alleged “Trump-handling” skills?

But here is the problem with that, frankly, silly approach: Trump is not an idiot. Attempts to “handle” him are insultingly obvious and, if he tolerates them temporarily, then it’s only to handle his would-be handlers back. And then the irony is, of course, that the only EU leaders Trump respects, such as Viktor Orban of Hungary, are outcasts among their own: Good luck recruiting them now to make up for how much he disrespects all the others. Maybe they’ll even help, a little, Ursula, Olaf, and Emmanuel. But it’ll cost you, because they will – rightly – set their own conditions and gain great leverage.

What about Danegeld perhaps? Danegeld, you must know, was what the hapless inhabitants of the British Isles paid the seaborne Viking marauders in the Dark Ages. The system was simple: pay up or be plundered and slaughtered. You think that sounds a little primitive for today’s sophisticated Europeans? Never underestimate how low they will stoop. Ursula von der Leyen has already suggested that one way to mollify Trump might be to just buy even more perversely expensive LNG from the US. Christine Lagarde, head of the European Central Bank, has gone even further, pleading for a whole ‘Buy American’ program, including – surprise, surprise! – arms to assuage Trump’s ire.

Desperate? You bet. Humiliating? Obviously. Yet what’s worse, it’s not going to work. Here’s why: Even if Trump condescends to accepting such tributes from his European subjects, he will never lose sight of the one thing that really interests him (apart from his own money, power, and fame): American advantage. Whatever the Europeans will offer and however low they will kowtow, in the end, any deal will be good only for one side, the US. That’s ironic, because Russia, for one, and possibly China as well can expect the minimum of respect that makes mutual benefit at least possible. That’s because they have stood up to American bullying. For the Europeans, though, it’s a Catch 22 now. One way or the other, they will pay even more dearly than before for their historic failure after the Cold War: When they should obviously have emancipated themselves from the US, they sold out worse than ever. And without need. To paraphrase a past master of politics: It’s worse than a crime, it’s self-abuse.

Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.

December 14, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

West shamelessly whitewashes barbarism in Syria

Strategic Culture Foundation | December 13, 2024

One week after the dramatic collapse of the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, it is too early to give a precise prognostication of how the Arab country and the wider region will emerge politically.

But already, there are grim signs of the nation surging in bloody conflict and barbarism. Predictably, the West is covering up its guilt for creating another epic horror, with its news media shamelessly propagandizing and denying the reality of Syria’s new rulers as terrorist factions.

Syria is facing a fate similar to Libya in 2011. The North African country was turned into a killing field by a NATO regime-change aggression under the cynical guise of “liberation.” NATO-backed jihadists brutally murdered Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and the former oil-rich country has been wrecked as a failed state, riven by warlordism ever since without a functioning national government.

Syria’s former president Assad escaped to Moscow and has been granted asylum by his Russian ally. Apart from that difference, Syria’s future looks ominously like Libya’s. Cruelly, that is rather fitting. The overthrow of Libya in 2011 was used by the United States and its Western allies to mount the regime-change war on Syria that also began in 2011, as recounted in our SCF editorial last week.

Thirteen years on, the takeover of Damascus by the terror group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is unleashing murderous reprisals, internecine warlordism, and sectarian hatred. The U.S. and its Western allies are strenuously covering up the huge imperial crime that has befallen Syria, as with Libya before.

In an audacious denial of reality, Washington and its European partners are talking up a “new beginning” for Syria. It’s a charade of optimism aimed at lulling the world into acceptance of heinous Western criminality.

This outpouring of Western optimism is while the Western-backed Israeli regime immediately launched a blitzkrieg on its northern neighbor, viewing the chaotic events in Syria as an opportunity to annex more land. The Israeli military extended its illegal occupation of the Golan Heights and carried out a massive bombing campaign across Syria.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a hurried tour of the region this week, no doubt to ensure an orderly carving up of Syrian territory and resources between Washington and its allies Turkey and Israel – all of whom have worked for years to pursue regime change in Damascus.

While Washington is urging the formation of a non-sectarian government in Syria that “respects religious minorities and women’s rights” – the cringemaking rhetoric of public relations – the reality on the ground told a different story.

The black flags of Wahhabi Islamism supported by HTS and its other al Qaeda-type associates were hoisted in Damascus and other cities. There are palpable fears among Syrian Shia and Alawite Muslims, as well as Christians, that they will be subjected to a reign of terror, as was seen during the years of U.S.-led proxy war from 2011 onwards with beheadings of infidels and apostates, among other atrocities.

Credible videos have shown HTS supporters executing unarmed captives and shouting obscenities about their victims’ perceived religious affiliation. There have been appalling scenes of barbarism where corpses are dragged through streets tied to trucks. Mothers holding the bodies of their slaughtered sons have been abused by jostling crowds in deranged bloodlust.

In an incredible wave of psyops, Western news media organizations have been whitewashing the events in Syria as a kind of “liberation from the tyranny of Assad rule.”

There have been multiple reports of crowds celebrating in the streets of Damascus and Aleppo, tearing down symbols of Bashar al-Assad and his father Hafez. However, the Western media have omitted or downplayed any reports that might indicate a descent into barbarism and sectarian killings.

If there was a prize for propaganda, the British state-owned BBC might have won it with this article headlined: “From Syrian jihadist leader to rebel politician. How Abu Mohammed al-Jolani reinvented himself.”

The truth is it is the Western media, like the BBC and CNN, that have “reinvented” al-Jolani.

The years of al-Jolani carrying out mass killings as a commander in Al Qaeda, Islamic State, Al Nusra as well as HTS have suddenly been shoved down the memory hole, and he is now presented as a statesman supposedly leading Syria to a brighter future.

His belated words about respecting religious minorities and pluralism are reported with cloying gullibility by the Western media. Washington and other Western governments are moving to recognize the new Syrian regime by delisting HTS as a terrorist group and indulging al-Jolani’s rhetoric about reconciliation and tolerance as somehow plausible.

Of course, Washington is euphoric about its apparent success in Syria. Damascus has long been a target for regime change, going back to the Eisenhower administration more than 70 years ago when the Arab state was perceived as being too independent.

More recently, as former U.S. Senator Richard Black explained in this 2016 article, Syria became a renewed target for Washington’s regime change in 2007 when then-President GW Bush’s administration decided Bashar al-Assad had to go. To achieve that illegal result, the U.S. and its regional allies deployed murderous proxies, one of which was Hayat Tahrir al-Sham – the new ruler in Damascus.

The covert proxy war continued under Obama, Trump, and Biden. Russia and Iran’s intervention to defend their Syrian ally managed to impede the regime-change objective, but, in the end, they did not succeed for various reasons, as adduced in a SCF commentary this week.

For over a decade, the Western media have systematically and blatantly lied about Syria to cover up for the U.S.-led imperial aggression against that country. They lied about Assad’s alleged despotism when, in reality, Syrians enjoyed religious and social freedoms. They lied about Assad using chemical weapons when it was the Western-backed jihadist terrorists who used them in false-flag provocations, as Seymour Hersh reported.

The overthrow of Assad appears to be a great victory for the Western imperialist agenda and a blow to Russia and Iran. Washington and its allies are in a celebratory mood over the spoils of victory.

But the signs of bloody disintegration are impossible to conceal even for the lying Western media. In the short term, the Western powers and their propaganda media are trying to present the new rulers of Syria as somehow reformed and benign. This is while Israel annexes territory and U.S. and Turkish-backed factions begin fighting over strongholds.

Syria’s descent into untold mayhem has begun, and in the usual Orwellian fashion, the Western culprits are trying to sell the infernal outcome as a liberation. This is typical of the whitewashing deception that comes as a matter of routine following every imperial regime-change operation. It never ends well.

The people of Syria and the region are facing more turmoil, chaos, conflict, and suffering. The criminal Western imperialist axis is emboldened, but lies are never a sound foundation for the future.

December 14, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Clintons Open to Possible Preemptive Pardon as Deep State May Abandon Them

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 13.12.2024

Former President Bill Clinton has indicated he is open to discussing a “pre-emptive pardon” for his wife, Hillary Clinton, with outgoing head of state Joe Biden, while maintaining that she has done nothing wrong.

This development was anticipated, according to Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel, who tells Sputnik that Bill Clinton is also likely to seek a pardon for himself and his daughter.

Ortel adds that the proposed pardon could cover a period starting much earlier than Hillary’s 2016 email scandal, which Bill Clinton mentioned on “The View” talk show.

The alleged fraud and pay-to-play activities involving the Clinton Foundation were significant issues, according to Ortel, who has been investigating the charity for many years.

“As in the case of the first Biden family pardon, my view is that a federal pardon for the Clinton family will have to go back, perhaps, to 1992 and continue so long as ‘The Clinton Foundation’ and its affiliates may operate,” Ortel suggests.

Earlier, Biden provided his son with an unusual blanket pardon covering all possible crimes between 2014 and 2024.

The Clintons “have been insiders in a rigged political system at the federal level” since Bill’s first presidential campaign in 1992, Ortel claims.

However, even a federal pre-emptive pardon from Biden “is likely to leave Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton vulnerable to state and foreign prosecutions, along with others,” the analyst believes.

Kash Patel Has Hillary Clinton on His “Government Gangsters” List

Bill Clinton’s readiness to discuss a pre-emptive pardon with President Joe Biden is likely influenced by FBI Director Christopher Wray’s decision to step down and Donald Trump’s nomination of Kash Patel, according to Ortel.

Ortel suggests that Wray is part of the same cabal as former FBI Director James Comey, who allowed Hillary Clinton to escape consequences for her 2016 email scandal.

In contrast, Patel has never been part of the D.C. “swamp” and played a key role in debunking the Trump-Russia collusion allegations, which, based on then-CIA Director John Brennan’s declassified memo, may have been fabricated by Hillary Clinton to divert attention from her email scandal.

According to Ortel, the Department of Justice (DoJ), FBI, and IRS have long covered up the Clintons’ apparent felonies, despite many being evident.

“When the FBI finally spoke with me in December 2018, they focused on my connections with Peter Smith, Jerry Corsi, and Roger Stone, claiming they lacked the scope to investigate why so many in the Obama and Bush administrations might be interested in covering up Clinton Foundation crimes,” Ortel says.

If Patel takes charge of the FBI, he is expected to overhaul the bureau and could investigate the Clintons earnestly, according to Ortel. Reports indicate that Hillary Clinton is on Patel’s “government gangsters” list.

Clintons Have Outlived Their Usefulness to Deep State

The globalist elites and much-discussed US “deep state” may no longer shield the Clintons, as they have outlived their usefulness, Ortel says.

“Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden have outlived their usefulness to rich globalists,” Ortel states.

The election defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris, along with the inability of the Clintons, Obamas, and Bidens to produce a more vibrant and popular presidential candidate, apparently exposed their political bankruptcy.

As a result, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who has long been considered an ally of the Democrats, dismissed the party’s gloom-and-doom warnings and openly signaled in October that a Donald Trump victory would be acceptable for Wall Street.

“Should the Trump administration prioritize prosecuting charity crimes, starting with wealthy donors like Bill Gates and George Soros and wealthy ‘educational public charities,’ whistleblowers and the incoming administration could make America proud by [taking down] the Clinton family and many other charity grifters who, even today, seem arrogantly unrepentant and unbowed,” Ortel concludes.

December 14, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

NATO’s New Hub: Bulgaria Announces Military Base in Yambol Region

Sputnik – 14.12.2024

MOSCOW – Bulgaria is planning to build a complex of facilities to accommodate a multinational NATO brigade of 3,000 military personnel, the Bulgarian News Agency reported on Saturday, citing Defense Minister Atanas Zapryanov.

The complex, housing residential, educational and sports facilities, will be located in the Kabile military district near the southeastern city of Yambol, the news agency reported.

The report said that ammunition would be stored in warehouses at a distance from the residential settlements and barracks.

“Neither ammunition nor other dangerous materials are planned to be stored [in the complex],” Zapryanov was quoted as saying.

Bulgaria is currently in talks with the NATO Support and Procurement Agency to determine the cost of the construction, the report added.

In recent years, Russia has witnessed unprecedented NATO activity near its western borders. Moscow has repeatedly expressed concern about the bloc’s buildup of forces in Europe, especially since the bloc supported the Kiev regime amid its attacks on Donbass.

NATO has transformed its eastern flank from having no combat-ready troops in place in 2014 to tens of thousands now, former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg admitted earlier.

In February, Russian President Vladimir Putin explained in detail in an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson that Moscow is not going to attack NATO countries, there is no point in it. The Russian leader noted that Western politicians regularly intimidate their populations with an imaginary Russian threat in order to distract attention from domestic problems.

December 14, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

South Korean parliament impeaches President Yoon

RT | December 14, 2024

The South Korean parliament has voted to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol over his brief imposition of martial law last week.

The National Assembly voted 204 to 85 in support of the measure on Saturday, above the required threshold of 200.

All 300 members of the legislature were in attendance for the secret ballot, but three abstained, and eight ballots were declared invalid.

The decision by the National Assembly means that Yoon is automatically suspended from office. The South Korean Constitutional Court now has 180 days to rule on the president’s removal from the post.

During this period, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo will act as the country’s interim president.

“This is a victory for the South Korean people and for democracy,” Park Chan-dae, the floor leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, said after the impeachment vote.

Yoon survived a first impeachment attempt last Saturday when his People Power Party (PPP) boycotted the vote.

However, the PPP changed its stance this week, after its efforts to persuade the president to step down voluntarily failed.

“We tried to find a better way than impeachment, but that other way is invalid,” party leader Han Dong-hoon said. “Suspending the president from his duties through impeachment is the only way for now, to defend democracy and the republic.”

The political crisis in South Korea erupted on December 3 when Yoon delivered a surprise televised address, declaring emergency martial law on the grounds that the opposition – which he accused of being sympathetic towards North Korea – had allegedly been preparing a “rebellion.”

Within hours, 190 lawmakers, who managed to access the National Assembly despite military cordons, voted unanimously to lift the decree. Thousands of people took to the streets to condemn the president’s actions.

Less than six hours after imposing martial law, the head of state announced that he had decided to retract his decision.

During his address on Thursday, Yoon, who faces an investigation over possible insurrection, defended his move, calling the declaration of martial law a “highly calibrated political judgment.” It was aimed to “protect the nation” from the opposition’s attempts to block the work of the government, he said.

READ MORE: South Korean president vows to ‘fight till the end’
“I will stand firm whether I am impeached or investigated. I will fight to the end,” the president pledged.

December 14, 2024 Posted by | Sinophobia | | Leave a comment

IS GREEN ENERGY GOING ATOMIC?

The HighWire with Del Bigtree | December 12, 2024

As big tech goes all in on artificial intelligence, the monumental amount of energy expected to be needed in the coming years has the 4 of the biggest US tech companies turning to nuclear energy. With lofty net zero goals appearing to not be coming to fruition, will nuclear be the new green energy?

December 13, 2024 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Nuclear Power, Video | | Leave a comment

OCCUPIED: Former IDF Volunteer to Chair House Foreign Affairs Committee, Trump Approves

By Frankie Stockes | SPN | December 12, 2024

At the behest of President-elect Donald Trump, GOP House Leadership has named Israeli-funded-and-tied Congressman Brian Mast as the new House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman, marking the first known time in American history that a veteran of a foreign military has led a congressional committee. Last year, Mast also became the first known member of Congress to wear the uniform of a foreign military to work at the U.S. Capitol, when he donned his IDF uniform in support of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, following the outbreak of war.

Assuming he’s confirmed by the GOP House Conference, Rep. Mast (R-FL) will succeed Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) as the Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman, giving the staunchly pro-Israel Mast jurisdiction over ALL of America’s foreign relations that come through Congress, including war powers, treaties, and the deployment of American troops overseas.

These duties are especially relevant to Mast’s background and loyalties, as he is a staunch opponent of a two-state solution in the Middle East, supporting Israel’s continued seizure of Palestinian land and the expansion of Israel’s borders.

Mast has even cheerled the wholesale slaughter of Palestinian civilians, telling the media in 2023 that he “would encourage the other side to not so lightly throw around the idea of innocent Palestinian civilians… I don’t think we would so lightly throw around the term innocent Nazi civilians during World War II.”

The Israeli press has rejoiced in Mast’s installation as chairman, with The Times of Israel calling him a “pugnacious defender of Israel in [America’s] Congress” in an article published this week.

“The US House of Representatives elected Florida Representative Brian Mast, a zealous pro-Israel Republican who has volunteered with a group that assists the Israeli army, to chair the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee,” The Times of Israel report went on, before revealing that President-elect Trump is behind the pending installation of Brian Mast.

“Insiders say that President-elect Donald Trump lobbied the Republican Steering Committee, which names committee chairs, to choose Mast.”

Mast, a self-proclaimed Christian and a U.S. Army veteran who lost both of his legs in the Middle East, later volunteered to serve the IDF and says on his campaign website that his worldview was shaped at Israeli “Shabbat tables.”

“I worked to strengthen the relationship between our two countries, as both a private citizen and as a soldier, because the national security of the United States is directly tied to the strength of Israel,” says Mast, who also says he will “advance policies” that are favorable to Israel and even use the force of the United States government to ensure that the American People are FORCED to support Israel.

“I will do all I can to put an end to the dangerous Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement,” he says.

Mast’s ties to Israel go well beyond serving the IDF and since his political career began, he’s received more than half a million dollars from the Israel lobby, with AIPAC holding the distinction of being his top donor.

December 13, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

UN Security Council ‘remains paralyzed’ by US – Russia

RT | December 14, 2024

By abusing its veto power, the US has made the UN Security Council incapable of enforcing peace in the Middle East, Russia has said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry released its statement after the UN General Assembly (UN GA) adopted two resolutions on the war in Gaza, including a resolution calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which is similar to a document earlier blocked by the US at the Security Council. Unlike resolutions passed by the Security Council, the resolutions adopted by the General Assembly are legally non-binding.

A resolution passed on Wednesday called for “an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire,” as well for “or the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.” The second document confirmed “full support” for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), and “deplored” Israel’s legislation that banned the agency’s work in the West Bank and Gaza.

In a statement on Friday, the Russian Foreign Ministry noted that the ceasefire resolution “largely repeated the content” of a draft that was vetoed by the US at the Security Council last month.

“Once again, since the start of the unprecedented escalation of violence and bloodshed in the Arab-Israeli conflict, it is the UN General Assembly that is adopting the urgently needed resolutions,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday. The call for a truce and access to humanitarian aid are “moral imperatives in the current catastrophic circumstances,” it added.

“The UN Security Council – the main body tasked with maintaining international peace and security – remains paralyzed as a result of the use of the veto power by Washington (six times since the beginning of the current crisis),” the ministry wrote on its website.

The US and Israel have argued that an immediate cessation of hostilities would only benefit Hamas and have accused the Palestinian armed group of sabotaging the negotiations. “It would be shameful and wrong if the General Assembly voted today to vindicate Hamas’ cynical strategy of stalling and obstruction,” US envoy to the UN, Robert Wood, said in a statement explaining Wednesday’s vote.

Israel has long accused UNRWA of covertly aiding Hamas and other militants. Despite the overwhelming evidence we submitted to the UN that substantiate Hamas’ infiltration of UNRWA, the UN did nothing to rectify the situation,” Israel’s envoy to the UN, Danny Danon, wrote on X last month.

UNRWA Philippe Lazzarini described Israel’s decision to block the operations of the agency as an “ongoing campaign to discredit UNRWA and delegitimize its role towards providing human-development assistance and services to Palestine refugees.”

Nearly 45,000 Palestinians have been killed during Israel’s operation in Gaza, according to local authorities. The war broke out on October 7, 2023, when Hamas and allied groups carried out a surprise attack on Israeli cities, killing some 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, around 100 of whom are believed to be still held in Gaza.

December 13, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Canadian mayor fined for LGBT thought crime of refusing to bend over

By Rachel Marsden | RT | December 13, 2024

The mayor of the Canadian township of Emo (pop: 1,204), which borders the US state of Minnesota, has to personally pay an LGBTQ group $5,000 for injury to their self-respect. And that’s on top of the $10,000 that the town has to fork over.

According to official documents, the drama started in 2020 when Borderland Pride, a Canadian non-profit group, requested that the town officials officially recognize Pride Month in June of that year. The town had done so in previous years, but reportedly decided to amend their proclamations policy – which had yet to be adopted when this latest request came through. So the group’s request was rejected in a 3-2 council vote that year.

It’s not like this particular policy amendment was high priority, particularly at the height of the Covid fiasco, since they barely had any requests anyway. This one group alone represented half of all of the town’s requests for declarations, proclamations, or flag displays from April 2019 to April 2020.

Their request for the town to fly the rainbow flag for a week, and to send the group photos of it with the town’s officials for use on social media, reportedly wasn’t considered since the town didn’t even have a flagpole.

So here comes a complaint by the group to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal – which was decided on November 20, 2024.

The role of such tribunals across Canada is to deal exclusively with complaints about discrimination on the basis of prohibited factors like race, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, and criminal convictions. Because if actual courts had to deal with things like this, they’d be clogged up like a frat house toilet after Frosh Week. If the complainant can prove that there was at least a 50 percent chance of discrimination on one of these bases, then it can order cash awards and other remedies. So step right up! Take a spin! Win cash and prizes!

In the case of Borderland Pride against the Township of Emo, the tribunal accepted at face value that the council didn’t consider hanging the flag because of its lack of a flagpole. It did however note that the flag could have been “displayed” somewhere else other than on a flagpole. But it stopped short of ordering the mayor to walk around with it like a Superman cape.

The tribunal also accepted that two of the three council votes against issuing the Pride Month proclamation occurred in good faith and were merely the result of not wanting to adopt any proclamations before the new policy governing them was put into place. It was only the mayor’s “no” vote that was problematic.

During the council meeting in question, after discussing what they should do with the Pride flag display request in the absence of a flagpole, but before the vote against the Pride Month proclamation, Mayor Harold McQuaker said, “There’s no flag being flown for the other side of the coin… there’s no flags being flown for the straight people.”

Uh oh, here’s comes the forbidden-thinking patrol!

The tribunal ruled that the mayor’s comment was “dismissive of Borderland Pride’s flag request and demonstrated a lack of understanding of the importance to Borderland Pride and other members of the LGBTQ2 community of the Pride flag” and constitutes discrimination.

Suddenly, because of the mayor’s pro-heterosexual comments, it must mean that he hates gays. So it’s decided that “on the preponderance of evidence,” the rejection of the Pride proclamation was, more likely than not, the end-result of the mayor’s homophobia, and couldn’t be because he aligned with the other two Council “no” votes on the need for the policy amendment to deal with it first.

“I don’t hate anybody,” he said. “We just don’t have a flagpole at our town hall,” McQuaker recently told the Toronto Sun. But cognitive deviance is cognitive deviance, and like a colon polyp, best to nip it in the bud so there’s zero risk of it ever potentially developing into systemic cancer.

So here come the experts to tell the tribunal about how malignant this mayor’s thinking already is.

According to Dr. Emily Saewyc, an LGBTQ specialist who testified at the hearing, research suggests that “anti-LGBTQ rhetoric by President Trump, Vice-President Pence, and members of Trump’s cabinet during his presidency visibly increased the amount of hate and violence” towards these minorities. Or, you know, maybe people are just fed up with having special interest agenda shoved down their throats in make-work projects for activists at a time when citizens of all stripes are facing common and federating hardships. She then attempted to draw a parallel with the “homophobic and hateful social media posts about Borderland Pride and the LGBTQ2 community” after the vote – as though people would have been cheering the LGBTQ cause had the mayor not been such a bigot and supported Pride Month.

Right, because the key to people embracing wokeism is just to firehose even more of it into the public domain. Guess she hasn’t heard about the impact on brands like Bud Light and Jaguar after going woke. Or the public outcry after the Paris Olympics opening ceremony featuring what many interpreted as being a tranny wreck version of the Last Supper.

Borderland Pride wanted the tribunal to allow it to choose a week for the Township to have 2020 Pride Month now, and to force it to hold Pride Month every June going forward. It refused. But it did order Mayor McQuaker to attend a sort of re-education camp. Within 30 days, he has to provide Borderland Pride with proof that he’s completed the province’s human rights training course.

McQuaker has basically told the tribunal to shove it, refusing to pay or take the course, calling it “extortion,” according to the Toronto Sun.

All of this is the sort of blueprint that demonstrates exactly how special interest agendas end up hijacking the most basic aspects of daily life, through relentless activist browbeating that has a chilling effect on anyone who fails to passionately cater to their sacred cows.

December 13, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

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